Re: [ericas] Stuck getting visas for IETF meetings

[Joe Abley <[e-mail]>]

On 2013-05-02, at 10:15, Fernando Gont <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 05/02/2013 11:02 AM, Nicolas Ruiz wrote:
>> On 05/02/2013 07:02 AM, Fernando Gont wrote:
>>> On 04/30/2013 06:28 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> There is not much we can do about the visa complexity at the IETF level.
>>>> But we can do two things:
>>>> 
>>>> -- collect information about relative levels of complexities exhibited
>>>>    by different venues.  Right now I would guess (but don't know) that
>>>>    it is easier for many to go to Canada than to the US.
>>> 
>>> That's mostly a myth, I would say. In the same way that quite a few
>>> times the folks at the Canadian border have been much less polite (if
>>> you know what I mean) than at the US border.
>> 
>> I don't think is a myth. In my experience it's more difficult to be
>> granted a visa to visit the US than western Europe.
> 
> Wasn't the discussion about "US vs Canada"?

I think the discussion was about "lowering barriers to attend meetings from developing regions".

I don't think in general there's a useful answer here. Whether or not visas are necessary, expensive or difficult to get for particular destinations depends wildly on the nationalities and travel histories of individuals. Everybody is different. Attendance at particular meetings varies for reasons other than visa/travel challenges. I doubt there is a good general solution, IETF-wide.

(For example, I hold three passports. I rarely need visas for anywhere, but when I do it's visas to African countries that take the most time. The only place I've been declined is Nigeria, and they were happy to accept me when I reapplied. I would have preferred them to just double the application fee rather than make me apply twice, but their visa, their rules. Travel to or through the US is more painful for me than Canada, but then again one of my passports is Canadian and hence my opinion there is not useful.)

It does seem possible that we could shift the balance of pain away from potential participants in developing regions and onto those from developed regions; perhaps a balance could be found where the pain subsidy could be judged to be appropriate and worthwhile if it promotes more diverse (there, I said it) attendance. I don't know how we'd do this in practice, though.


Joe